Toisday in June - 1:17 p.m.

Off Words

Mr. Oaf has an odd relationship to the written word. He apparently makes his ‘living’ through words yet he doesn’t like them all the time. He wrote 35,880 words recently and now he feels it’s a mighty big ask to write another 35,000+ words, just like that, thank you very much.

Then there are the people who only want him to write a few words. His former employers at Australian Arse Corrector pay the relatively princely sum of 45 cents per word but the amount of wordage is getting shorter and shorter. In the olden days, an article was 500 words, or $225.00. For a day’s work – which is about the amount of time it takes to write 500 really good words – that’s not bad. But then AAC’s words started dropping, first to 400 words ($180.00) and now to the absurd level of 200 words ($90.00). Meanwhile, the folks over at Independent Film magazine asked him to write a story of 1500 words (good), but for 20 cents a word (very, very bad). Put that $280.00 in your bank account and smoke it.

Late Night Poetry Gymkhana

It was 1.45am. Teddy claimed to be a poet and he knew it.

“There was a bear from Nantucket,” he began promisingly, “Who owned a brand new bucket…”

Then he started shuffling about and it soon became obvious he didn’t have anything else in his so-called ‘poem’.

Bim leapt forward and concluded the poem in a distinctly ‘blue’ fashion. We were all appalled. Mrs. Oaf started sobbing while Nesbitt just went ‘tsk tsk tsk’.

“Please, can’t we all just go to sleep now?” cried Mr. Oaf from underneath the covers.

Newcastle In Convict Lashing Power Grab

So says the Central Coast Extra, a news extra supplement that comes free with the Daily Telegraph. Apparently, locals are outraged by plans for Newcastle (a small city 2 hours north of Pearl Beach) to grab the tourist dollars that are going to waste now that Old Sydney Town, (a recreation of convict-era Sydney and a tourist attraction on the Central Coast for 20 years), is closed.

Coast Angered By Tourism Grab it says under a picture of three blokes dressed up as Red Coats, complete with muskets, pantaloons and greasy moustaches. Local journalist Vanessa McCausland - who is ‘a bit of alright’ who you’d gladly buy a Bundy Rum & Coke at the Ettalong RSL – writes about the outrage:

“Newcastle is attempting to steal tourists from the Central Coast by venturing into the convict tourism theme to fill the void left by the closure of Old Sydney Town. The move by the former steel town to benefit from the Central Coast loss has angered business and community leaders and could spark a tourism war between the two regions…”

We are reminded of the scene in Spinal Tap where the guys discuss filling “a badly needed void” but that aside, there are a number of unanswered assertions here that need to discussed. First and most importantly is the fact that Old Sydney Town closed due to no one going. It lost millions of dollars despite bail outs from the State Government. It was a financial disaster. As to how moving the whole thing a few hundred miles up the coast could change its fortunes remains a mystery. Dubbo, the famous zoo town in the Western part of the state, has a theme court house with animatronic convicts that get hung and stuck in stocks but that hasn’t been much of a commercial success either.

We are most concerned about the possibility of a “tourist war” erupting between these otherwise calm regions. What exactly this war may mean is a mystery left unaddressed by Vanessa’s article, but we fear the worst.

TEZNEZCO! (The Company Run By Bears! ™) proposes that Old Sydney Town with its troopers, badly behaved convicts who need a good floggin’ and butter churners in their attractive convict style hats, be combined with Eric Worral’s Reptile Park. The Reptile Park has a huge yellow dinosaur that stands watch over the Gosford turn off and, with the right amount of technology, could be made to attack Old Sydney Town at 11am, 1pm, 2.30pm and then at 5pm.

Take that, former steel town!

bears in history - future bears

“This diary cracked me up, completely, perhaps the oddest diary I have ever read. I'm not sure if it's a takeoff on something or someone that I have somehow missed. Regardless, TEZNEZCO! chronicles the adventures of two bears and describe them as if they are a minority of some sort. The writing is disturbingly matter-of-fact as if it is perfectly normal to be writing about these bears as people. I like it; it's pleasantly novel" - Diaryreview

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